Thoughtlessness...Everywhere

    Before I begin a moderate rant, as well as a dash of holier-than-thou opining...What, you Boss? Holier than thou? C'mon... I have a confession to make. Not long ago I was talking with a dear friend and I mentioned that I was thinking of renaming the website. The current name for the last decade or so has been "From The Golf Room." A catchy little title that I thought up all by my lonesome. This lightning-strike of creative genius convinced me that I could do this whole writing/opining thing with a hint of intelligence, humor, and grace. Which just goes to show I don't need a lot of evidence, if any, to rationalize something while being entirely...WRONG! No doubt there are wiser minds out there that testified the "lightning strike" mentioned above was little more than a dull spark from a somewhat wet matchstick. Oh, well. What's done is done.

    Anyway, as I was saying, I mentioned to this friend and kind reader (who shall remain nameless so as to protect his reputation) that I was going to change the name of my site to "Six Feet of Twisted Steel and Sex Appeal!" I figured I could get more female readers this way, right? Pretty good, huh? It has the lyrical appeal of rhyme and self-description! I mean, I am six-feet tall in my golf shoes, and I know which sex I am! This friend starts laughing hysterically and then says, and I quote, "Pete, if you're going to use that site name, why not just use MY name and keep it simple...The Original G!" Yes, dear readers...these are my friends. Uh-oh...so much for remaining nameless! My bad, G.

    But this also got me thinking; what if I do change the name to "Six Feet of Twisted Steel and Sex Appeal" and women e-mail me, and instead of asking ME out to lunch or could they join ME for a walk in the park, they ask how to get in touch with The Original G, or Don Juan, or worse yet Executive Editor, Man About Town Chip Magee!! How embarrassing would that be?! Not one e-mail for ME!! My self-esteem in ruins! Not to mention that I didn't even come up with that site name! Let's just stick with From The Golf Room and move on. Deep breath everyone.

    So, where do we begin. Oh, yeah. There are times when I need to look to the ancients for a little bit of solace from today's, oh how do I put this, perplexities. I don't know about you, dear reader, but I'm tiring of the, what shall we call it, "plague of thoughtlessness." EVERYWHERE! And believe it or not, Thomas Aquinas may offer some wisdom and shine a light on our contemporary discourse.  Now, to be fair, I don't have a whole lot of interest in Aquinas' theological musings, but I respect his thoughts on human nature, even though those thoughts, in the end, lead him to his god. That said, when we think of thoughtlessness I think most of us think of it as a mistake. We assume we spoke wrongly or just got confused about something. But for Aquinas, it amounted to an ongoing "vice", or even a "sin." Either way, he describes thoughtlessness as a serious moral failing. And I'm not sure he's wrong. He said it's the habitual failure to take the CARE, TIME, and INTEREST NECESSARY for responsible and meaningful speech and behavior. 

    All of this reintroduced itself to me recently during The Masters which is a golf tournament held in Augusta, Georgia every year at the Augusta National Golf Club. The Masters is also a MAJOR golf tournament, one of four held throughout the year (the other three being the US Open, the British Open, and the PGA Championship). And every year you hear the complaints that Tiger Woods is the "sole black person" to have won the tournament (which he won in 1997, 2001, 2002, 2005 and 2019) because the golf club was so frighteningly slow to admit blacks as members. Tiger would have, in my opinion, won many more Masters championships if not for injuries and hookers. But that's another story. This horrific "no black members policy" was finally changed, though not by diktat, but by Woods' brilliance on the golf course. 

    One would think things would end there and people would sort of...move on. But no. Talking heads like Keith Olberman, formerly of ESPN and now of podcast fame, feel the need to poke the bear, as it were. Maybe they want more "hits" or they want to have the "hot take" that gets them back to the "big time" so to speak. Olberman's not stupid...he's just a jackass. Keith (can I call him Keith?) opines, every year it seems, that the name of the tournament was an intentional allusion to the slave-owning "masters" in the south. The great amateur golfer and course designer, Bobby Jones, no doubt rolls over in his grave when he hears such an absurd, juvenile, "THOUGHTLESS" statement. And some of Keith's cohorts have actually insisted, with frightening ignorance, that the tournament be moved out of Augusta, Georgia. Really? This would be tantamount to moving the pyramids out of Egypt...morons! These are the types of things I'm talking about when I say, "Sometimes, the mind loses its capacity for outrage." It's called... "THOUGHTLESSNESS."

    And let me piss off a few more people, because...take it away, Sancho! We just don't care anymore, Boss! That's right my furry, quadruped friend. It's my new oeuvre! Some people consider things like these back and forth comments, as just differences of opinion. Well, they would be wrong. And I mean, galactically wrong. In fact, if one were to think about it, they are not opinions at all. An opinion needs to be rooted in reality and have a regard for the give and take of debate. If your comments are grossly irresponsible and violate the moral obligation to take proper care before speaking and acting...then you're a moron. And that is what is happening today...all over this great land. People say shit like, "All conservatives are racists," or, "All black people are lazy," or "Every liberal is a communist," or "Every cheerleader is a slut because she stole my boyfriend!" I just made that last one up, but you know what I'm talking about. It's STUPID, and it's anti-intellectual, and it's... well, it's STUPID!" I'm sorry. I lost my mind for a minute because, as most of you know, I HATE STUPID!

    Bear with me now, because I'm going to rant a little more. Eat your Corn Flakes, Don Juan! (I hate it that Don eats so healthy...but anyway!) The question then becomes, "Why do people say such frighteningly STUPID things?!" I mean, you can't swing a dead cat (HEY, BOSS...EASY!) without hitting a fact-checker! So you would think that the putting together of words wouldn't come out so STUPID! Well, in these times, maybe it's fashionable. Or maybe these dopes know that there are many other dopes that will high-five them literally, or figuratively...and they will feel better about themselves without any actual thinking. Kind of like an echo chamber. Maybe they'll get on a late-night talk show. Can you imagine me on a late night talk show? That would be COOL! You're an idiot! On the other hand, the human impulse for malice seems, sadly, to know no end. Maybe some people just live to be mean, or to say neanderthal-like phrases in order to upset the apple cart, or even to further political agendas. 

    But thoughtlessness may be the most worrisome reason of all. Because if you really don't care about what you're saying and who you may be unfairly tarnishing, or what is reality...then you are dangerous. Because the thoughtless person doesn't take the care or the effort to form an opinion before speaking or acting. And that's what Aquinas was talking about. These people have a "contempt" for deliberation. Which leads us to people either having trouble with the truth or, if there are enough people of like-mindedness, to establish a "post-truth," which is where we could be, or not already, heading. For the thoughtless person, any facts...or no facts at all...will do. Doesn't matter! "I can make it up as I go along!"

    And now that we've come full circle to Mr. Aquinas...prudence is the ultimate and preeminent virtue. Anything leading to imprudence, like THOUGHTLESSNESS is, what's the word, devilish! It is a serious moral transgression. And it needs to be confronted and weeded out. 

    I could rant on and on about the causes of thoughtlessness. Because I'm a dork, I thought of the wonderful little book I read not long ago, Leisure, the Basis of Culture, by Josef Pieper. He talks about how the health of a culture is in many ways directly attributable to how a culture uses its leisure time. Do we squander our leisure time with smartphones and iPads and quasi-virtual reality games? I mean, these things have their place, but are they worthy of a good life and moral and intellectual improvement? I happen to think these things are aids, but not the end all and be all of the good life. 

    At the risk of sounding like the old man, "Get off my lawn," kind of guy...the younger generation seems to have come of age lacking the capacity for meaningful and due deliberation. The difficulty now is that even if education were reformed tomorrow, there still remains a whole generation or more who are habitually thoughtless. For that reason, we are riding out a storm whose end is not yet in sight. As our parents taught us, "Old habits die hard." And there is no vaccine for a pandemic of thoughtlessness. 

write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com